Clifford Asness is probably going to be annoyed when he sees that thisarticle begins with a discussion about how much money he makes, but there'sno way around it. Asness is a very successful hedge-fund manager, and verysuccessful hedge-fund managers make stupendous amounts of money, even byWall Street's extravagant standards. And in the public mind, theirstaggering compensation tends to overshadow pretty much everything else.''Filthy Stinking Rich'' was New York magazine's unambiguous take on thehedge-fund phenomenon some months ago. Last month, in its survey of thebest-paid hedge-fund managers, Institutional Investor's Alpha magazinereported that the average pay for the top 25 hedge-fund managers was anastounding $251 million in 2004. Asness himself has written, in one of hisbetter lines, that hedge funds ''are generally run for rich people inGeneva, Switzerland, by rich people in Greenwich, Conn.'' .....